Documentaries

Friday, April 01, 2016

Notfilm is showing April 1st through 7th at the Anthology Film Archives, NYC, and the American Cinematheque, LA, April 1st through 9th.

I understand Samuel Beckett's dramatic work about as much as grapefruit is sweet, but I get Buster Keaton. How can you not get Buster Keaton? He's funny, sublimely, absurdly funny, while Beckett is serious, sublimely, absurdism-reaching serious. Put the two together and you get Film, a confounding--while intriguing--1965 short, silent movie that's Beckett's one-time art house indulgence times a thousand.

Ross Lipman's inquisitive documentary on the making of Film, aptly titled NotFilm, aside from dissecting the arduous creative process involved, will, more importantly, serve to put your mind at rest if you've seen Film and scratched your head more than once. What's made clear in Lipman's intellectually driven yet emotionally inclusive discourse is that Beckett wasn't clear either, at least on the best ways to deliver Film's ulterior meaning. He simply didn't know how to translate his literary vision into the technical elements needed for scene and camera to portray his intentions. Neither did his production colleagues, and that's what's fascinating about Film: it's filled with existentialism and synchronicity even before you get to actually watching it, with a movie-making crew not realizing they are in a Beckettian play entitled Waiting for Film. Lipman captures this.

But unlike Godot, Film does eventually arrive. Somewhat. And Notfilm examines that "somewhat" rather well.

Photographs, interviews, letters, notes, illustrative excerpts from silent movies, and the shop talk recordings of Beckett, his director Alan Schneider and cinematographer Boris Kaufman, explaining to each other, but not really understanding each other, provides the argument for the existential angst in the making of Film. When you realize that Charlie Chaplain, Zero Mostel, and Jack MacGowran were each considered for the lead role, but events conspired to bring Buster Keaton to its realization--the Great Stone Face and one of the greatest film directors of all time, you can see the synchronicity; and the irony, since neither his face nor directing skills were much used by Beckett or Schneider.

Keaton was happy, more or less, to have work. Ill, very much alone, broke, and in the process of dying, he didn't understand Beckett or his movie's raison d'etre at all (although Beckett's character, simply known as O, is also alone, broke, and in the process of dying), but he persisted. Whatever comedic bits he did, or flashes of his face shown (before the final scene), were clipped from the final cut. Under the Brooklyn Bridge, in sweltering heat, he would do whatever was needed to complete the scene, having the director call out directions while filming and redoing actions while filming if not good enough. Keaton wasn't one for much rehearsal. He simply did.

It is through an extensive examination from philosophical idea to concrete film that Lipman finds the poignancy and the brilliance found and missed in Film. Segmenting his documentary into parts, the creative team is assembled first, then their choices made, followed by the problems to be surmounted because of those choices. Film is about two characters: O the pursued (played by Keaton), and E the pursuer (the camera's eye) . Who O is and who or what, exactly, is pursuing him (death, perhaps, or unfulfilled life?) is open to conjecture, and Lipman offers much to conjecture on. An exercise in George Berkely's esse est percipi, or a more personal feeling-statement by Beckett, or an artsy attempt handicapped by inexperience, take your pick or take them all.

Notfilm provides insight: Beckett's vision was failing him. O's sight is failing him. We see test scenes done to determine the best approach for creating O's blurred sight when we look through his eyes. What is Beckett implying? E's sight is perfect; unflinching, stark, and crystal clear. E sees O, then pursues him. Like the quintessential silent comedy modus operandi, Film is about pursuit. Easily said, but putting that pursuit onto film proved difficult. The technical difficulties in handling the camera angles and motion would force changes.

By the end of the first day they had blown the budget and couldn't do the multi-participant street scene as Beckett planned. Compromises were made, with his approval, and O becomes a singular character hiding his face against a stark background populated by three other characters; a couple and a solitary old woman (James Karen, Susan Reed, and Nell Harrison). O runs into the couple and encounters the old woman coming down the stairs in his flight away from E. While O evades E, they look upon E and become horrified. Again, what is Beckett implying about E?

More conundrums ensue as O enters a mostly empty room and hides himself from the mirror, the animals, and the gaze of Abu, a minor Sumerian god of plants and vegetation, peering with large eyes at him from a print crudely nailed to the otherwise blank wall. But E eventually catches up with O.

I am not sure which is better: to watch Film first or Notfilm? But watching one, you should not miss the other, whichever order you take, as both complement each other. Answers and questions will abound, but fascination of Film remains.

Thursday, March 03, 2016

NEW YORK – FilmRise announced today that it has acquired U.S. distribution rights for the documentary, Holy Hell, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

The film is an inside look at a secretive, spiritual cult formed in 1980s West Hollywood.

Director Will Allen joined the group just after graduating from film school and as he became more deeply involved, he began filming his experiences as the group’s unofficial videographer.

The distributor will release the film theatrically on May 20, 2016.

It wasn’t until after Allen left the cult that he understood the film he’d been making for over twenty years. Working with producers Alexandra Johnes and ex-cult member Tracey Harnish, Allen decided to use his footage to take others on his journey.

Holy Hell is executive produced by Michael C. Donaldson, Cheryl Sanders, Julian Goldstein and Academy Award®-winner Jared Leto, who describes the film as “relentless, haunting and unforgettable.”

“Following its headline-making run at Sundance, we are elated to be bringing this gripping film to audiences come spring,” said Danny Fisher, CEO of FilmRise. “Ultimately this is a remarkable film about the human condition, and I am confident that audiences will be engrossed by this captivating story, told by those who lived it.”

“I am so happy that FilmRise will be releasing Holy Hell in theaters for communities to experience together,” said filmmaker Will Allen. “This story is very personal but also universal, because it could have happened to anyone. And seeing how broadly it resonated at Sundance makes me excited to share it with the rest of the world.”

The deal was negotiated between Fisher, FilmRise’s VP of Acquisitions Max Einhorn representing the distributor with Donaldson Califf’s Dean Cheley and Michael Donaldson representing the filmmakers along with Andrew Herwitz, President of The Film Sales Company. Herwitz noted that there is also substantial television interest in the film around the world.

Thursday, November 07, 2013

It's something you would be hard pressed to write in fiction: small Pittsburgh-based production company gets bored with making television spots that include Mr. Rogers' Gets a Tonsillectomy, beer commercials, and a Calgon commercial knocking off Fantastic Voyage and decides to produce THE MOVIE that would change the face of horror.

Of course George A. Romero, John Russo, and Russ Streiner never realized the THE MOVIE part at the time; and we can forgive them for first wanting to do Romero's screenplay Whine of the Fawn, a Bergmanesque snoozer. But thank god for us reality reared up and kicked sense into them that a horror movie was an easier sell to their prospective investors. The rest is history. And a rich and inspiring history it is.

Bob Kuhns captures this inspiring history to a worthwhile degree in his lively documentary Birth of the Living Dead, giving us the skinny on how a small production company moved from small fries ad spots to buying a 35mm camera in hopes of baking a hot potato money-making movie. So what if it didn't make much money for Romero or his investors? It sure as hell made tons of money for everyone else, and the nightmare it started is still going gangbusters across the zombie-stomping globe, from commercials (ironic, right, given Romero's start?), to television series, to an endless stream of mall crawls, village invasions, movies, and merchandising.

That movie, Night of the Living Dead, originally written as a comedy, created the tropes, themes, styles, and scares that are constantly revisisted and expanded on today. But you already know that. Its cheapo black and white starkness, its non-actors who could actually act and ad-lib their lines, and Romero's simple screenplay delivered through sharp editing, still chills us with its flesh-eating zombies (or as Romero originally called them, "Ghouls") and their unending aim to eat anything not moving fast enough away from them. Toss in that eerie, nerve-tingling, music score and the all-hell-breaks-loose-everybody-for-themselves dynamic with its marked deviation from the usual supernatural, psycho, and scientific horrors playing theaters and drive-ins up to 1968, and it's no wonder the wise-ass matinee kids--waiting to goof around and chuck their popcorn at the screen the minute the credits rolled--didn't know what hit them between the eyes. Neither did the critics whose ire was boundless. Romero and company set out to make Night of the Living Dead "as balsy a horror film as we could make." Their gorilla filmmaking did just that.

Night of the Living Dead premiered on October 1, 1968 at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh. Nationally, it was shown as a Saturday afternoon matinée – as was typical for horror films at the time – and attracted an audience consisting of pre-teens and adolescents. The MPAA film rating system was not in place until November 1968, so even young children were not prohibited from purchasing tickets. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times chided theater owners and parents who allowed children access to the film with such potent content for a horror film they were entirely unprepared for. "I don't think the younger kids really knew what hit them," he said. "They were used to going to movies, sure, and they'd seen some horror movies before, sure, but this was something else." According to Ebert, the film affected the audience immediately. (Wikipedia)

Although Kuhn invokes enough authoritative talking heads to establish this fact (among them are Gale Ann Hurd, Larry Fessenden, Jason Zinoman, Elvis Mitchell, and Chiz Schultz), it's Romero's ingenuous reminiscenses and witty insight we salivate over. The way he explains it, it sounded like the whole undertaking was a lark. A lot of hard, crazy work, but a lark.

Splicing in Vietnam War footage, scene clips, animated segments, 1968 race riots footage, and a side trip as teacher Christopher Cruz shows Night of the Living Dead to his young students in his Literacy Through Film Program class (yes, the times have indeed changed), we always come back to Romero as he describes the shooting's trials and tribulations at the abandoned farmhouse they rented, and the final nerve-racking search for a distributor. Everyone involved wore muliple hats to pitch in: Bill "Chilly Billy" Cardile joined the cast as a news reporter and gave free publicity for the movie through his Chiller Theatre horror hosted show; aerial shots of zombies stumbling in the fields were provided courtesy of hitching a ride with the local news chopper; local sheriffs with their police dogs joined in the zombie hunting with gusto; Chuck Craig, a real newsroom reporter played a fictional newsroom reporter, writing his own news copy for the movie, making it play uncomfortably too real.

With the movie in the can and ready to sell, distributors presented more challenges because they wanted a happier ending. No way was Night of the Living Dead in any way a movie that could end happily. Walter Reade eventually took the chance, with depressing ending and all gore scenes intact, but screwed up big time when they inadvertantly dropped the copyright notice off the new prints when changing the original title of Night of the Fleash Eaters to Night of the Living Dead. How many millions of dollars did Romero and his investors never see because of this simple oversight? As Night went public domain, their profits went out the door. Sure, Romero can laugh it off now, but it must still hurt. A lot.

The usual social and political instigations and social backdrops for how and why Night of the Living Dead eventually hits every nerve just right is touched on but glossed over by Kuhn and never fleshed out. He doesn't plumb those connections, just their intimations. Sure, maybe it was luck and timing; maybe Romero was too lazy to change the role of Ben, written for a white actor but played by a black one instead; or maybe, subconsciously, Romero and company weren't really taking shortcuts but tapping into some Jungian primalcy without realizing it, fueled by their annoyance at how much the 1960s promised to change the world's social order, but failed to.

So damned if they didn't just go ahead and change the world on their own instead.

Friday, February 10, 2012

"By mistake, he actually made a good picture once and awhile." -- Jack Nicholson, Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

"Taste was out of the question." -- Martin Scorsese, Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

Cinema Trash filmmaking is an art form--seriously, it is-- and its greatest ideologist and practicioner is Roger Corman. He didn't invent cheap sensational movies, but he knew how to make them highly profitable and when to kick-start a trend or exploit it to sell more theater seats (or drive-in car slots). Soft-spoken but craftily articulate, Corman is the star of Alex Stapleton's no frills documentary, Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, which highlights how Corman ignited the careers of actors and directors who embraced--more like succumbed to, really--his pragmatic, and unwavering, bottom-line focused, moviemaking eye.

I first became acquainted with Corman's work through The Terror, a movie whose inexplicable mix of budget-friendly moments and left-over sets went unnoticed by my 7-year-old eyes as I ruined my parents night out. I couldn't help it. I refused to stay home with the babysitter so they had to take me along to the Loew's Oriental theater (this was in Brooklyn). I quietly sat between them as I watched Jack Nicholson, Dick Miller, Boris Karloff, and Sandra Knight chew up the gothic scenery, not really understanding what was happening. Of course, after the five or so directors got through with it, no one else did, either. I'm sure I had hit up the concession stand for treats, but I don't remember what I ate. What I do remember is that scene: Helene (Sandra Knight) melting away into brown goo after Andre (Jack Nicholson) rescues her. That I remember. I blame Corman for hooking me on horror movies because The Terror is the first one I saw on the big screen (or small, for that matter).

My father isn't much into horror movies, but my mom was. I'm sure she had forced him to see The Terror. What my dad did like back then were biker movies, so the next memorable Corman movie for me was seen at a New Jersey drive-in. It was on a double bill (maybe triple, actually) that I saw The Wild Angels and Richard Rush's Hells Angels on Wheels (starring Jack Nicholson). I peetered out by the time the third movie started playing so we headed home. My dad forgot to unhitch the speaker from the car's window, so we took that home, too.

Biker movies always scared me more than the supernatural and monster ones. The odds of being beat up by a biker (my nose was broken by one) were greater than being attacked by a giant, head-eating crab with googly eyes or a giant plant noshing on my body parts. Between the bikers, the seafood, and the florist, Corman's cinema world percolates with its roughness, exploitation, hipness, and edgy cheapness, and all of this is revealed by Stapleton through movie clips, Corman's own words, and words from the notable creative people who brought us these independent--in attitude as well as production--movies.

Stapleton shows us the lean, iconoclastic, must-not-deviate-from-plan Corman machine with its output spanning nearly every genre: western, gangster, science fiction, horror, teenage angst, biker, psychedelic, and social commentary with his more daring--AIP didnt' want it, so he produced it himself--The Intruder, which starred William Shatner. For horror fans, it's the Poe cycle of the 1960s, with Vincent Price, that makes Corman a household name. House of Usher, Masque of the Red Death, The Raven (with Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre), The Haunted Palace (actually taken from H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward), The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Premature Burial (starring Ray Milland and Hazel Court instead of Price) are atmospheric. Aided by recognizable actors and stylish use (and re-use) of sets, costumes, and storylines, they remain clear examples of how artistic expression and commercial success can be achieved on a shoestring budget.

The Raven's sets, when Corman realized he had a few days left on the shooting schedule before they would be torn down, were used in The Terror. In turn, Peter Bogdanovich, who cut his teeth for Corman with Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, would utilize footage of The Terror in Targets, his disturbing movie that highlights the demarcation line between the old style monsters of Universal Studios and the new, socially misfitted, psycho-killing monster living next door. (See my review: Targets: Is This What I Was Afraid Of?)

Bogdanovich had to use Boris Karloff in Targets because Karloff owed Corman a few days work, and Corman also insisted some twenty minutes of scenes from The Terror be incorporated by Bogdanovich (but in the final tally it was only a few). Given these requirements, Bogdanovich and Samuel Fuller wrote the screenplay, resulting in a movie that transcends its limitations by embracing them, making it a must-see movie for every horror fan as it presages the reality-terrors of the 1970s. It also earned a place in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

I don't know how Stapleton coaxed the usually laconic Jack Nicholson to talk about his years with Corman, but he opens up in a way that invigorates this documentary through his simplicity and directness about the relationship. At one point Nicholson cries when he realizes how much his career gained by falling under Corman's spell. Film clips keep the documentary lively, while an on location shoot with Corman for Dinoshark provides a glimpse of him in action.

Like Svengali, Corman mesmerizes those who work under him into squeezing their talents through his production funnel to produce usually awful, often memorably awful, and sometimes even noteworthy movies. No drive-in needed.

Friday, February 03, 2012

We all like to play in the discarded places, the abandoned buildings, the dark forests, pretending the devil is calling for his due, or imagining the dark shadows hide dangerous things that can't reach long enough to catch us. All this play exhilarates us, and let's us experience evils that hold no power over us. We scare ourselves with urban legends and thrice-told folktales of dreaded things, and play even harder to outrace the Boogeymen.

In 1987, the Boogeyman reached long enough to snatch 12-year-old Jennifer Schweiger into the darkness. She wasn't the first. From the 1970s to the 1980s, six mentally disabled children and one older one went missing. Jennifer would be the only one found, partially visible in a shallow grave, in a place, strangely enough, already searched extensively, in the Staten Island Greenbelt woods surrounding the Willowbrook State School's abandoned and dilapidated buildings. Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio's investigative documentary, Cropsey, takes us into those discarded places of Willowbrook and the darkness radiating from them into a mystery, at the center of which lies a drifter, Andre Rand. Sometimes the Boogeyman is real.

Through old newspaper clippings, interviews, black and white photographs, and archival news footage, Zeman and Brancaccio begin with Jennifer's disappearance, which leads to Rand, a former orderly at Willowbrook, which leads to his eerie presence at locales where other mentally-disabled children have disappeared over the years.

In videotape of Rand being taken into custody he appears entranced and wild-eyed, like Charles Milles Manson, and drools as he stumbles along in handcuffs. In the hand-written letters he writes from jail to Zeman and Brancaccio, in response to their interview requests, he mentions how "evil sells," his legal concerns, and what's-in-it-for-him in-between the sentences where his thoughts drift into quotations from scripture. It's noted how his handwriting changes through the course of his correspondence. Rand's mother was committed to Pilgrim State Hospital, but the documentary does not delve deeper into Rand's past. It doesn't provide answers, so don't look for them. What it does provide is a sense of how urban legends like Cropsey (the slasher killer at camp, on the road, who lurks nearby) spring up in communities. This horror-veneer makes the documentary appear at first glance like a mockumentary. But as each disappearance is added, and Rand is shown, the reality sets in and you wind up wishing it weren't true.

Zeman and Brancaccio slowly move the camera through the abandoned, graffiti-sprayed buildings, interview the aged detectives, the still grieving families, the defense and prosecution lawyers, and the community without getting in the way of what anyone has to say or feel, then bring us back to the 1970s and 1980s by showing us the historical videos from Channel 7 and Staten Island's local news. There's Geraldo Rivera's investigation of Willowbrook, the shocking videos of neglect, filth, the warehousing of human beings no one else wanted; the trajedy seems to stem from those buildings and what took place there.

Slowly zooming into news articles from various New York and Staten Island newspapers hammers you even more with apparent connections between disappearences . A chilling synchronicity comes when 22-year old Hank Gafforio is seen standing in the background of a news video shot a few years before he went missing; the news video was about Holly Ann Hughes disappearance and its lack of clues. The documetary's morose pace, not cheered by the sombre, horror movie-style background music, lays out the details, the coincidences, the suppositions, and the guesses, but connecting them provides tantalizing questions and a template for creating an urban legend.

Did Rand work alone? If he did, how did Jennifer's body wind up in an area of ground already searched after he was encarcerated? From somebody trying to frame him? Is he guilty of the disappearences? Is he guilty of murder? Did his time as an orderly at Willowbrook unhinge his sanity? Why did he live on the grounds and in the tunnels of Willowbrook State School after it closed? What do the rumors of devil worship and the Farm Colony have to do with the disappearences? Are they just more urban mythmaking by the community's bored teenagers.

Those teenagers show up on a walk-through at night, playfully looking for the boogeyman, leading to a lighter moment as Zeman and Brancaccio prowl around looking for the possible occult activity rumored to be happening in the area. Maybe the urban legends are there to warn us; to tell us some places must be avoided because the Boogeyman lives there. And he's real.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

If you are a horror movie fan, you know the last few years have seen a number of documentaries on the subject of television horror hosts. Vampira: The Movie came out in 1998, but it wasn’t until it hit DVD shelves in 2007 that most people got a chance to see it. While it got mixed reviews, the film was important for several reasons. Foremost, it cast light on a major cult figure of the 1950s who officially set in motion the craft of television horror hosting. In turn, the documentary launched the craft of documenting those boils and ghouls who kept several generations up late.

Since then, American Scary, Watch Horror Movies, Keep America Strong, Every Other Day is Halloween and other documentaries have followed, including a film my company released in late 2009, Virginia Creepers: The Horror Host Tradition of the Old Dominion. In that particular opus magnum, we explored the chronological history of Virginia and DC hosts, a subject much richer than even we knew when we began the project.

And...that in turn has sprung a new documentary, Hi There, Horror Movie Fans, which is something of a sequel to the previous film. We kept getting requests for more on Bill Bowman and his character, The Bowman Body, and there was a ton of material we had to cut to trim the Bowman section to a manageable length, so...sure! There’s room for that too.

Why This, Why Now?

Part of the trend toward these films is admittedly, simple nostalgia. Most of the people making these films are somewhere around 40-50 years old. Like it or not, when you get to be that age, you start to think more about your personal history. As horror host Mr. Lobo put it, when we were filming Virginia Creepers, there is an irresistible force in us to justify and elevate our guilty pleasures. Documentaries tend to do just that.

A second factor is equally obvious: technology. Every day, good quality cameras, computers and software come down in price and up in accessibility, making independent films proliferate like mad. Add in YouTube and its cousins you now have an instant stage (though you are surrounded by millions of others).

One more social-historical factor has come into play as well: reality TV. There! I said it! Reality TV has actually been a positive factor in the growth of documentaries in general.

In short, people have become a lot more accustomed to watching real people talk about their lives in front of a camera. Without getting into the politics of it, consider also the high profile documentaries of Michael Moore. He has inserted himself into the format, accidentally carving a place for more personal interest and less news-style objectivity (not that we have that even in news any more).

Hosts With the Most

But, these are all general factors. What of horror hosts in particular?

What follows are not remarkably original observations, but they are critical ones when it comes to understanding horror hosts in history, and the rebirth of the genre.

Horror hosts fill the very old role of shaman/spirit guide. For those of us who first watched horror hosts on TV, late at night with the lights down, the host played that role with information about the film. Before IMDb and instant access to every bit of information on the planet, young viewers especially relied on the wisdom of these older weirdos to set the mysterious elements of the universe in place. That has a powerful emotional impact when you are young and it helps explain their appeal.

Also, in the heyday of horror hosting on TV, between 1957 and 1977 (i.e. from the SHOCK! package to Star Wars and VCRs), this was the only way to see classic horror films. It was also a time when kid culture, particularly monster kid culture, was evolving into what we know today. The two combined in a powerful way to create a subculture-cool that hosts made possible./p>

Consider this: one of the things we found in the process of doing Virginia Creepers was a shared behavior pattern among the lingering devotees. Each week, when the TV listings came out in the paper, kids would circle every monster movie they could find and plan their week around it. Many kids were taping the audio on cassette recorders and cutting out ads as part of their ritual as well. Like comic books and Aurora models, this was another form of collecting and offered similar social rewards. After all, being the only kid in your neighborhood to see ALL the Frankenstein movies made you very, very cool.

Additionally, one of the interesting 'accidents' of the TV horror host phenomenon is that it gave kids an introduction to another time and culture. Movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s featured different clothes, cars, speech, and relationships than what kids grew up with in many cases.

When I was first catching Dr. Madblood and Bowman Body in the early 1970s, no one I knew wore a hat, jacket, and tie everywhere, but that’s how you fought giant ants and hunted mummies back in the day. However, no one worried that they were not getting a full experience simply because it was in (horror of horrors) black and white, either! That, in a strange way, opened doors.

An additional factor is locality. Because hosts played in a local market, they had local sponsors most of the time. They referenced local events and landmarks and they appeared at supermarkets and tire stores you could actually go to. They were typically very accessible in a way we simply cannot imagine today.

For example, in the course of doing our latest film about the Bowman Body, it has become clear that part of his personal legend is his record of public appearances. He never spoke down to adoring kids and never distanced himself from exuberant teenagers and college students. Think about that for a minute...college students! Can you imagine any local TV personality today attracting the attention of college students, let alone being invited to host a fraternity party? But that is just what Bill Bowman did.

Once More Into the Breach, Dear Friends

Okay, so does all this justify yet another horror host documentary? Damn straight!

Maybe it's just me, but there are two good reasons for adding one more documentary to the growing pile.

First of all, Bill Bowman’s character was genuinely unique. He put on the ghoul make up but never attempted to play the part. He had a remarkable comic timing and could play cornball next to double entendre seamlessly. It was a wild little ride where anything could happen that week. His enduring popularity as a pitchman, even two decades after his show left the air, says a lot about him.

Secondly, wherever there is an interest in telling a story about these folks it contributes to the whole. Maybe we are just trying to justify our guilty pleasures, but if we don’t do it, who will? To put it another way, during the early 1970s, when Bill Bowman first started his show, there was Watergate, Vietnam, bussing, the Manson family, several species of equality movements, and the end of the Beatles. All that—the world of adults at the time--will get documented over and over again.

But, if those who lived through a world of Universal classics on TV, horror comics on the 7-11 racks and Aurora models on the shelf don’t document that side of the time, then don’t hold your breath for the History channel or PBS to do it for us.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Horse Archer Productions, is producing a documentary this summer about Virginia's rich horror host tradition called Virginia Creepers: The Horror Host Tradition of the Old Dominion. Here's the lowdown from Sean Kotz:

I think we will do most of the filming between the last week of April
and the first week of June and we are currently planning a theater
event in Richmond at the historic Byrd theater which seats 1300.

A couple of years ago, I formed a film company with my friend, Chris Valluzzo, and our first documentary, 2007's HOKIE NATION, a film about Virginia Tech's incredible football fans, has done very well and is now in a second pressing. The success of that film has given us the resources to pursue other projects that reflect our personal interests, including VIRGINIA CREEPERS.

As a kid, I lived in the Tidewater area of Virginia and became hooked by Dr. Madblood on WAVY TV 10, but I was also able to pick up a fuzzy signal from Channel 8 in Richmond and get Bowman Body on nights when the airwaves were generous. We moved to Northern Virginia in 1978 and soon I had Count Gore DeVol to keep me entertained. In other words, I was a host junkie back in the day, so perhaps it was inevitable that I would want to do something to capture that tradition as we experience it here in Virginia.

For this film, we want the microcosm of the Virginia experience to speak to people wherever they are. Naturally, we are interviewing the hosts, and a big part of our goal is to open up that history as well as the great hosts from the state who are still practicing the craft. At the same time, however, we really want to capture the fan experience and try to reveal why our hosts are so important to so many people. We don't want to define the experience so much as celebrate it, and in that way, I think the film will be very unique.

Currently, we are inviting anyone who has an interest in this film to get in touch with us. We are looking for fans who have great stories, powerful memories and interesting memorabilia and perhaps some old clips unknown to the rest of the world. We are also seeking corporate and individual sponsors, AND we are looking for venues in Tidewater, Richmond and Northern Virginia for fan interviews and media events.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

The year is 1954. It's midnight on a KABC-TV Saturday night. A striking, impossibly wasp-waisted woman in a torn black dress glides down a long, dry ice misty, cobwebbed corridor toward the camera, past unlit candelabras. She stops. Suddenly she screams, then looks at the camera with a devilish gleam in her eyes and says "Screaming relaxes me so."

Vampira's short-lived television show--where, in-between showing gems like White Zombie and forgettable B-fare, she would mix a foaming cocktail to "absolutely kill you," or search for her always lost pet spider, Rollo--opened the door for the many male and female horror hosts that followed, and set the tongue-in-cheek, ghoul-cool standard for hosting still seen today. With her phallic-looking nails, plunging v-neck exposed bosom, and sardonic wit, she presented quite the picture of the succubus every straight guy would love to meet in a darkened room.

Kevin Sean Michaels, in his documentary, Vampira: The Movie, introduces us to Maila Nurmi, Vampira's more normal alter ego. In her eighties now, this succubus may have faded with time, but her wit remains as Nurmi talks about the creation of her influential character, still celebrated by horrorheads everywhere.

The most striking revelation, at least for me, is that she didn't start out the way she ended up. While many of us tend to do that, we, generally, have an inkling as to where we want to end up and aim accordingly. For Nurmi, all she wanted was to be an evangelist. How she missed that path--thank you God from us horror fans--is an interesting mix of plan and chance. Her plan was to make enough money so she could pitch a tent and start preaching. The chance came when she appeared at a costume ball, gets spotted by a producer looking for a good reason people would lose sleep for, and is hired to host a bunch of shlock horror movies that any sane person wouldn't watch in the daytime, let alone midnight on a Saturday night.

Using her love for comics, cartoonist Charles Addams, and bondage photographer and artist John Willie, Nurmi set about to create a "glamor ghoul." She mixed the sensual power of Terry and the Pirates' Dragon Lady, the ghoulish, bizarre charm of the Addams Family, and the fetishistic allure of Willie's tightly-bound leather ladies in ecstasy (or distress) to create the first Goth chick on the television screen.

In-between the testimonials and remembrances from notable horror personalities like Forrest J. Ackerman, Zacherley, Sid Haig, Lloyd Kaufman, Jerry Only of the Misfits, and many others, Nurmi recalls her sudden fame and subsequent Hollywood blacklisting,, and her associations with Marlon Brando and James Dean. While Vampira may have been a sexy, liberated ghoul, Nurmi shied away from acting because she disliked its competitive nature, and professed to be not as sexually-emancipated as her more seductive twin.

Cassandra Peterson discusses the lawsuit regarding her Elvira, Mistress of the Dark character, whom Nurmi felt looked too much like Vampira, and a good portion of the documentary focuses on Vampira's appearance in Plan 9 From Outer Space, in which Nurmi gives her initial impression of Edward D. Wood Jr. as a "low-born idiot." Unfortunately, little remains of Vampira's KABC-TV show, so Wood's legendary train wreck of a movie is her most-remembered appearance. After reading the script and complaining about her dialog, she and Wood agreed to make her character in the film silent.

The documentary is a welcome and long overdue tribute to an influential figure in the annals of cinematic horror, but it does have its minor faults. Background music is used when silence would have been golden, and too much time is spent on Plan 9 From Outer Space and Wood. The special features play more like "we've got to find something to add" instead of more note-worthy content, though, from the director's commentary it appears there's just not much material available. Nurmi led a hermit-like existence after James Dean's death, and it is quite an accomplishment to get her talking at all. But one pines for more clips from her show, and more personal recollections from those closest to her. But hearing and seeing Maila Nurmi, even after all this time, is to die for. Thanks to her devoted fans that helped make this documentary, we don't have to go that far.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

In spite of a disheartened director, and a greatly reduced budget, the 1931 film, Dracula, remains a classic for various reasons. For one thing, it was the first speaking horror film, although music was not used except for the opening credits. For another, it had indelible performances by skillful actors.

One performance stands out above the rest, and has left its mark on subsequent impersonations of the aristocrat of the undead, and ushered in an era of monsters that continues to this day.

Perhaps it was the oddly-inflected voice, with the thick accent, that hinted of wolves baying in the moonlight and fear-inducing evils-by-night, living in dark forests; or maybe it was the slow, determined mannerisms of a person, undead for centuries, for whom the urgencies of mortal time held little meaning; or it could have been those eyes that pierced right through you from under that furrowed brow. For whatever reasons, Bela Lugosi's performance of Dracula is the image of the vampire count that has stood the test of time.

In Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula, writer and director Gary Rhodes explores Lugosi's amazing career using rare film clips and onscreen interviews with Lugosi's son, and others that knew Lugosi. What makes this documentary stand above the rest is its use of living history — people — to talk about the man and actor, providing us with an insightful glimpse into this iconic actor's professional and personal life. Combined with previously unseen footage and stills of Lugosi's early silent work, this two-disc DVD set clearly shows the broad range of talent and indomitableness of Lugosi as Hollywood ignored him, and squandered his acting in films well beneath his abilities.

Clever additions to the set are some of Lugosi's Old Time Radio 'appearances,' including the creepy, The Thirsty Death from Mystery House, 1944, and an Easter Egg! The funny mockumentary of Gary Rhodes' quest to sit in Bela Lugosi's chair can be viewed by going to the last page in the DVD Notes section until "Back" is highlighted, then pressing the Up arrow on your remote (or keyboard, if watching on a PC), followed by pressing "Enter."

In the Deleted Scenes section, you will find more film footage and discussion on White Zombie (one of his creepiest performances) and Lugosi's Poverty Row films of the 1930s. From Murder Legendre in White Zombie, to Ygor in Son of Frankenstein, Lugosi's performances were always masterful and uniquely different, and created memorable characters in horror cinema.

Director Gary Rhodes steps into the closet for an interview.

How did the idea for putting together the documentary come about?

I found the previous Lugosi documentaries [of which there were two of note (Lugosi: Forgotten King, and the A&E Bio)] to be very limited. Knowing that there were quite a few important and interesting people that neither of those films interviewed, such as Hope Lugosi, spurred me to plan the documentary. That was in tandem with the fact that I knew the whereabouts of a good deal of previously unseen footage.

What challenges did you face to bring the documentary to life?

There were a few challenges. That so many people we wanted to interview were already deceased. That some clips were so expensive we couldn't afford them. Those would be the two biggest challenges.

While watching the documentary, I was happy to see many clips and stills from Lugosi's silents' performances, something you rarely see. What challenges did you face in finding them, and why can't we see more of Lugosi's work in silent films?

The difficulty with Lugosi's silent work is that very little exists. We incorporated clips from the only surviving fragments of Lugosi's Hungarian career, which were thus seen publicly for the very first time. We found and used clips from Dance on the Volcano, which was the first time the clips had ever been seen (and we were thus responsible for its subsequent release through Sinister Cinema). And we used clips from Deerslayer,Silent Command, and Midnight Girl.

The reason more of his silent work can't be seen is that very few beyond those we drew clips from exist. Daughters Who Pay, from 1926, exists at the Eastman House in a version that must be transferred to safety stock and restored (at a cost of many thousands of dollars) before it can be viewed/released. But most of his work of the time simply doesn't exist, particularly his Hungarian and German period.

That montage of scenes you orchestrated, without narration, especially caught my attention. At first it didn't quite register, but when I watched the documentary a second time, I realized it captured much of Lugosi's acting versatility.

I appreciate your comment about the montage of scenes, as that was what I was driving after. Some way to encapsulate the larger whole of his work, especially given the time constraints of an hour film (which was still in fact longer than previous docs on BL, which were both hovering around 44mins). Plus, it was a way of working with the previously mentioned challenge of not having enough access to the Universal film clips due to cost.

As a writer and director, do you use a different approach when working on a documentary compared to the way you approach a regular movie?

I've been making films professionally since 1991, and my first documentary (Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian) is still in print from VIEW Video ... it raised enough funds to mark the hitherto unmarked grave of the seminal electric guitar player.

But I think in recent years my approach has changed, and that change has happened since/just after finishing the Lugosi doc. From Solo Flight thru Fiddlin Man and Lugosi: HD, I approached things too much as a historian, possibly. Privileging rare clips/interviews with those who hadn't been/etc., above the concerns of fictional film, which would be things like narrative form, three-act structures, and so forth.

I think doing the mockumentary film Chair (about Lugosi's Chair, which is a hidden feature/easter egg on the DVD made me begin thinking more about emphasizing the story being told over the tools used to tell it (like, say, rare clips or the like).

This has impacted more recent work of mine, particularly Banned in Oklahoma , Seawood (a just-finished film about alzheimer's ... a case study), and my movement more and more into fictional film (like Wit's End, a feature comedy). So it has been a transition.

As for Bela, that was probably simultaneously the best and worst topic for me to do... the best because of my love for his work, my lifelong interest in him, and my knowledge of the subject (I had previously written Lugosi: His Life in Films, on Stage, and in the Hearts of Horror Lovers, a 1997 book for McFarland, recently back in print in paperback). But I say it was also the worst choice because I was/am too caught up in minor details, adoring, say, an extremely rare clip when most viewers wouldn't necessarily know whether it was rare or not.

At any rate, my love for Lugosi continues. I have a book (that Dick Sheffield helped on) called Bela Lugosi, Dreams and Nightmares that is brand new... it is literally due out in print on Feb 20 of this year, in just a few weeks.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

I met author John McCarty (Splatter Movies) at the recent Fangoria Weekend of Horrors Convention in New Jersey, where he showed clips from his documentary, Fearmakers.

I was interested by his determination to chronicle the creative people who have made horror cinema a passion for horrorheads everywhere and asked him about it.

What led you to create the documentary, Fearmakers?

Around 1994 or so an editor at St. Martin’s Press approached me to do a book on the directors behind the cinema’s most enduring – i.e., classic – horror, SF, and suspense films. I called the book The Fearmakers and it profiled around twenty of them, from Benjamin Christensen to Stuart Gordon.

A year or so after The Fearmakers was published a Texas-based filmmaker with whom I was working on another book called The Sleaze Merchants suggested turning The Fearmakers into a television series. He got a Texas-based production company interested and we selected a baker’s dozen of the filmmakers profiled in the book for the episodes, and taped the series in 1996, interviewing actors, directors, film technicians, and so forth on both coasts. I served as on-camera host (a mistake I always believed) and narrator.

When the series was completed, it was shopped around, and sold well overseas, to Japan, the Middle East, France, Britain, etc, where each territory was able to substitute me with an on-camera host of their own speaking their own language. The series never received any domestic play in the States, and was never released on DVD here, probably because it lacked a “name” as host, even though the shows themselves were filled with name interviewees, from John Carpenter and Richard Matheson to Joe Dante and Stuart Gordon.

About a year ago, I contacted the production company in Texas and made a deal with them to take over the show and re-do it on my own, cutting them in on any domestic distribution deal I might make. I retained myself as narrator, but eliminated myself as on-camera host so as not to have a host at all. I’d always had a fondness for making films and not just writing about them, so I was not unfamiliar with the filmmaking and editing process. The digital realm had opened up a whole new world of possibilities for us would-be auteurs so I acquired some heavy-duty movie editing software programs and went to work, completely re-fashioning the baker’s dozen original episodes into the package of ten half-hour programs available now, which I am taking to market. It’s a labor of love, aimed squarely at us fans of the genre.